Virtualization Tops Miami Dade College CIO's Priority List

Miami Dade College CIO Karl Herleman lists his top 5 current priorities as an IT decision maker, including virtualizing everything, selling MDC's Technology Strategic Plan and using the cloud to enable shared services.

Karl
Herleman has been the CIO of Miami Dade College since 2006.
In that role, he oversees the technology needs of more than 160,000
students across eight campuses and several outreach centers. Herleman
was formerly group vice president and enterprise architect at Gartner,
and has held positions at Titan and Veritas. Below are the issues
topping Herleman's priority list right now.1. Continue to Virtualize Everything
Last year, we reduced our energy bills in the data center by 5
percent, consolidated over 100 servers and reduced the time to
provision new servers-and none of our customers know the difference.
There's nothing not to like about virtualization, and now it's time for
us to tackle the PC/desktop.

2. Market and Sell the Updated Technology Strategic Plan

It's complete and was presented a couple of times to the executive
team, but nobody has really internalized or grasped how it will change
their business. MDC's Technology Strategic Plan is a high-level vision
for how emerging technologies will enable the college to reach its
strategic objectives. It also discusses technology mega-trends and how
they will impact the college over the next five years. It will form the
basis for prioritizing and funding future initiatives.
3. Push for Shared Services
The economic crisis makes it a great time to knock down political
and cultural barriers. Also, the cloud is close to being ready, and
will help us to enable shared services. The technology-SOA, SAAS,
virtualization, Web services, etc.-has matured to the point that it
isn't the major barrier to implementing shared services.
4. Keep Analyzing That Looming ERP Replacement
It's a bad time to start a risky project with a huge price tag that
nobody wants to do. But we have to be ready for the eventual economic
upturn, and we must modernize our administrative systems to remain
competitive and efficient.
5. Centralize as Much as Possible
All open positions are frozen, and we can't even replace people who
retire/leave. There's no easier way to do more with less than
standardization and centralization.